Sabal v. Robbinsdale Police Department

Background

On July 7, 2020, Mathilda Sabal drove with her children after leaving her mother’s house. John Kaczmarek, a Robbinsdale police officer, observed Sabal run a stop sign and pursued her with emergency lights and then a siren. Sabal continued driving through additional stop signs and controlled intersections before stopping. Kaczmarek drew his firearm, ordered Sabal to keep her hands up and turn off the vehicle, and held the firearm up for approximately 43 to 45 seconds. Sabal complied, another officer handcuffed her, and officers attended to the children after Sabal told them they were in the vehicle.

Sabal was charged with misdemeanor careless driving, misdemeanor failure to yield to an emergency vehicle, and misdemeanor failure to yield to a traffic-control device. She was convicted of two petty misdemeanors. Sabal and her minor children filed this pro se lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging excessive force, police misconduct, racial profiling, false arrest, and emotional distress. The court also construed the complaint as asserting a First Amendment retaliation claim and a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Motion for Default Judgment

The plaintiffs sought default judgment, arguing that defendants had not timely responded and that defendants’ responses had not been properly served. The court denied the motion. It found no evidence that plaintiffs had properly served the initial complaint because the proof-of-service pages were blank. The court also found that defendants responded by filing and mailing their motion to dismiss to Sabal’s last known address, and that the mailed documents were not returned as undeliverable.

Motion to Dismiss

The court applied Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which allows dismissal when a complaint does not allege enough facts to state a legally plausible claim. In deciding the motion, the court accepted factual allegations as true and viewed reasonable inferences in plaintiffs’ favor, but it did not accept unsupported legal conclusions. It also considered the recorded police videos and other materials embraced by the complaint.

Robbinsdale Police Department

The court held that the Robbinsdale Police Department was not a legal entity subject to suit. It therefore dismissed the department as a defendant.

Claims Against Kaczmarek

The court found that plaintiffs had not expressly and unambiguously sued Kaczmarek in his individual capacity. It therefore construed the claims against him as official-capacity claims, which are equivalent to claims against the City of Robbinsdale. The court noted that any individual-capacity claim would also fail because of qualified immunity, a legal protection for government officials unless their conduct violated a clearly established legal right.

On the excessive-force claim, the court applied the Fourth Amendment’s objective-reasonableness standard. It concluded that the facts alleged did not plausibly show that drawing the firearm was objectively unreasonable under the circumstances. Kaczmarek drew the firearm after Sabal had continued driving despite police lights and a siren, lowered it after another officer arrived and Sabal was being handcuffed, and did not continue pointing it at her.

The court also dismissed the racial-profiling claim. It found that the complaint offered only the statement that Sabal was racially profiled and did not allege facts showing that Kaczmarek knew her race when he began the pursuit. The court further noted that Sabal had run a stop sign, making Kaczmarek’s belief that she had violated a traffic law reasonable.

The court dismissed the false-arrest claim because Kaczmarek had at least “arguable probable cause,” meaning that a reasonable officer could have concluded that probable cause existed. The court relied on Sabal’s failure to stop promptly after Kaczmarek activated his emergency lights and siren, her continued driving through two stop signs, and her increased speed during the pursuit. The court concluded that these facts supported qualified immunity.

The court dismissed the First Amendment claim because plaintiffs did not allege that Sabal engaged in protected speech or other protected activity for which defendants retaliated.

Claims Against the City

The court dismissed the official-capacity claims against the City of Robbinsdale. A municipality cannot be held liable under § 1983 solely because an employee allegedly acted improperly. Plaintiffs had to allege that a city policy, custom, or failure to train caused a constitutional violation, but they did not do so. The court also stated that the absence of an underlying constitutional violation by Kaczmarek independently foreclosed city liability.

Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress

The court construed the complaint as asserting an intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim for Sabal and her children. It granted defendants’ motion to dismiss that claim because the complaint and video recordings did not suggest conduct that was extreme or outrageous under Minnesota law.

Disposition

The court granted defendants’ Motion to Dismiss, denied plaintiffs’ Motion for Default, and dismissed plaintiffs’ claims against defendants with prejudice. The court directed that judgment be entered accordingly. Judge Donovan W. Frank signed the order.